The only survivor of his desolated clan, the infamous Borrower kingslayer and assassin Rowan the Last is on the run from forces unknown. Dropped from the jaws of death, he falls into the hands of the chaotic pink-haired streamer Human Zelly Klouse-Calloway who gives him a simple promise: “you can trust me.”
Betrayal, love, war, memes, and more. Take a seat, o’ reader mine, and listen to the tale of Offline Valor.
Offline Valor:
Chapter 1 - (Word Count 3324): A wounded assassin, a self-care trip to Starbucks, and the world’s hottest potato chip. Zelly’s life just got a lot more complicated.
Chapter 2 - (Word Count 3590): Wracked by the haunting memories of his past, Rowan wakes up in Zelly’s care. But is this a titan a friend or foe to the Breaker of Crowns?
Chapter 3 - (Word Count 3874): Burdened with responsibility and grappling with her new reality, Zelly tries to best figure out how to help Rowan. Meanwhile, across town a pair of thieves plan their next heist...
Chapter 4 - (Word Count 5250): Both Borrower and Human takes steps into the unknown--neither know what direction to take. All they can do is enjoy some Greek food and learn a bit more about one another.
Do you have any random facts about your characters that are just too random to put into 1 post? I'm a baby creator still not knowing a lot about my own works yet so it's really interesting to see creators knowing their characters more in depth. Basically, a fact dump of your characters would be very much appreciated! 😳
SCREAM oh you're so sweet fr 😭 bless you @smolcomfycat
AAAAAAAH okay so I'm using this as a self-indulgent "it's my birthday so I'm just gonna ramble about my blorbos because they make my heart sparkle", so find everything you'd like to know below the cut 💜
(if y’all have any additional questions, feel free to shoot an Ask! This is just kinda of the top of the iceberg of what I could ramble regarding kdaflsjkgfjd)
-Freyja's jersey number 26 is in reference to my birthday:)
-Freyja & Alice’s ship name is Herbeau
-Rowan & Zelly’s ship name is Rolly
-Zelly's inspiration was taken largely from the fact I was really into watching Twitch/was fascinated with Streamer culture during 2020-22.
-Zelly swears like a sailor, so sorry you’ll never see me actually write that lol
-Both Zelly & Rowan were born outside of the continental U.S. in Offline Valor.
-Like Freyja, her sisters all have names taken from Norse mythology.
-Freyja asked out Alice first, but after a few dates Alice was the one who eventually ask if he could kiss her.
-Freyja loves to rock climb.
-Freyja focuses better when she has something to fidget with.
-Alice went as unnamed for more than 6 months. Originally he was just called Freyja’s “little beau” which helped prompt the eventually surname Beauchamp.
-Alice is a musical theatre kid! He’s been in three productions and was the lead in one of them as well.
-Genesis Day and Kaiju!Freyja really came a from common complaint regarding Kaiju/Giant Monster movies and how the human element is always the weakest/most boring. So I decided to blend the elements of the Human & the Monster to really dissect and peel back some new themes and dynamics. (plus I also discovered some things about myself during the course of designing her Kaiju form. ...no, why do you ask if I'm a monsterfu-)
-Alice was designed with the central color of lavender and purple in mind, and that was back when I only owned a single dark purple shirt which was too small for me. Now I have two lavender hoodies, and several lavender and purple shirts/button-downs. Honestly it was an experiment to have Alice wear lavender before me because I really wanted to ALLOW myself to love that color, and now I can't separate myself from it.
-Zelly’s full first name is Zelda. She was named after Zelda Fitzgerald however, and not after Princess Zelda. She grew up being called Zelda by her parents but once she got older and expressed an interest in streaming she started to go by Zelly because she thought it was incredibly cringe for a video gamer to be seemingly named after a fictional character.
-Freyja is canonically built like Lusia from Encanto, and now it's so much easier to explain to people what Freyja's shape language is for commissions and such. 😭
-Rowan was taught how to dance by Princeps Lazuli before their falling out. He can still dance, but is sheepish about it.
-Rowan was adopted by Clan Ash when he was roughly 8 or 9 and was raised by a woman named Thistle, who is the sister of Oleander. There's some spoilers as to Thistle's role within the Clan, but I love her<3
-Oleander was instructed by Clan Ash’s leader, Lowlord Yucca, to train Rowan how to fight and kill when he was roughly 11 or so.
-When designing Lazuli, I wanted the main color of their house be a dark turquoise because I remember my Mom wearing a lot of turquoise jewelry growing up. So my brain automatically associates turquoise with finery and royalty.
-When designing Maura I knew I didn’t want her to fall into the “popular plastic” trope. Rather, I wanted her to be the “sweater vest wearing, smiley business major going to Sunday School who no one would suspect is utterly toxic and manipulative.” I think the specific wording that came to mind was “viper in sheep’s clothing.”
-In AUs where Freyja is a Human (namely Offline Valor/Borrower!AU & Emotional Shifter!Alice AU), she rides a motorcycle and does a lot of mechanic work for her family and friends.
-Rowan’s main titles--Unmowable, Crownbreaker, Matchside--come from three separate instances of his direct involvement in stopping coups/takeovers of different kingdoms within the area. He earned the first and third titles thanks to attempts on his life, while the second--arguably the most famous epithet--is the most recent, and was earned after disposing the last tyrannical monarch of the greater area roughly two or three years ago when he was 23.
-The inspiration for Rust comes from my childhood love of powerful, masked brutes/bounty hunters whose faces you might never ever see or you'd never hear speak.
-There is deeply sentimental feelings for Rowan regarding his cloak (which is, in fact, a cloth that's used to clean glasses).
-Rust isn’t a full-blooded Borrower.
-Fireteam Griffin was my first attempt to really include new AU-centric OCs for Genesis Day & the Kaiju!AU. Because I knew that the story would start off with Maura & Alice together (and Alice purposefully isolated from other friends as a result), so I wanted Freyja her own friends that weren't tied solely to Alice. Inspired by other ensemble casts (Power Rangers, Voltron, the original Halo novels), I wanted Freyja to have a small cast of pseudo-siblings. I ended up loving the dynamics of Ekland, Williams, Delgado, and Hunter SO much that they're now going to be included into the University!AU as the "Griffin House" and will all play different sports and be besties with Freyja. Sergeant Buck will also be in GTU but will be a professor and maybe the Griffin House act as his research assistance or somethin’.
RAHHHHHHH, I got a few asks encouraging this, soooooo... 👉🏻👈🏻
Ask and ye shall receive 😌💖 have a few notes regarding the character conception process behind these three (dw no spoilers). Enjoy the deets for Lazuli, Rust, and Donovan below the cuuuut
LAZULI
It's important for me to have political intrigue and drama in Offline Valor--assassination plots at masquerade balls n all that. That's why the Big Bad of Offline Valor ends up being directly tied to a lot of that kind of activity; however, you have Rowan who is a scruffy, aloof, infamous war hero who isn't really the "socializing type" and Zelly who IS the social-type but is coming into this with fresh eyes as our audience surrogate.
So in comes Lazuli, princeps (a gender neutral term in Offline Valor, for the child of a reigning monarch) of House Silver. They're confident, charismatic, suave, brilliant, and not afraid to call Zelly a child to her face (despite being sixteen times smaller than the streamer). And they have a PAST with Rowan too! They were once really really really really close, but something drove them apart--now Lazuli is filled with anger and Rowan with shame. So when the Big Bad rears his ugly head, Rowan & Zelly have no choice but to go to Lazuli for assistance. But of course, Lazuli
GOSH I love Laz
RUST
Much like Lazuli, Rust was created to give Rowan a proper rival. But in this case, a physical one. A lot of my appeal with Rowan is that despite being a few inches tall, he is DEADLY and STRONG and incredibly capable. His struggle isn't "needing to do more" it's "learning to do less," and Rust helps typify that struggle. Rust is not a force that can be beat head-on. She's a Borrower, true, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have the means to take on Humans either.
And despite being the "strong, silent, masked merc" ala Boba Fett, Rust has a lot of fun conflict internally and while a lot of that will probably be explored in the Second Story for the Offline Valor setting, I plan to show off some of those quiet story elements in her character design and how Rowan & Zelly start to interact with her once they start piecing more of her story together as they try to stop her and her employer, the Big Bad.
DONOVAN
I lovingly blame my dear friend @chamomile-g-tea for this one. Parents in G/t aren't something that I've seen very often, and if they are it's just in passing. Because of that, I've really started to think about the families for my main OCs (with exception of Rowan, since a lot of his conception was already built around the family life he grew up in) but also I had the urge to make a more prominent OC (in the same vein of important as Maura, Rust, and Lazuli) who was a parent. Cue Donovan!
While she is a general in Genesis Day and a prominent member of the agency hunting down Freyja & NUVA-002, Donovan isn't afraid of breaking rules and defying orders from her superiors--and a lot of this comes from the influence of her daughter and her feelings towards the agency's mission statement as a whole. As seen briefly in the Interlude of Genesis Day, she gets impatient with protocol and arbitrary rules and is happy to overstep Director Barrus if it means saving lives.
Donovan's story is the one I'm probably MOST excited to tell. And while it is pretty Genesis Day-centric, I'm incredibly excited to start including her in more AUs too--as either a small or a big.
GOSH okay. So. Great question. It’s a “yes and no.” Some of them are realllllllly tricky for me to come to a solid decision regarding. But for those who I am confident in assigning voice claims to would be:
-Lazuli: Laura Bailey (Vex'ahlia from Critical Role, but would have an American accent with that same sultry timbre)
-Rowan: Liam O'Brien
-Ekland (from Fireteam Griffin): Oscar Isaac
-Donovan: Cissy Jones
-Freyja might be able to be voiced by Emma Stone (but maybe a tad deeper), and Rust might be able to be voiced by Misty Lee (again, a tad deeper).
-Maura & Zelly are tough. Any recommendations or suggestions would be lovely!
-And finally I think we all know who would voice Alice
Anyways! Thank you SO much for the ask! Sorry it took a bit, I wanted to post Chapter 8 of Genesis Day first before I discussed Donovan!
Hi y'all! I'm plopping this here to get general feedback and to gauge interest regarding some characters/AUs/prompts/scenarios/etc. that I've been puttering around with! While I do have two (three, four...) big stories planned/am working on, I do want to be able to work on a lot of smaller one-off stuff as well. But I'd LOVE to hear what y'all think! This information is anonymous and your information will not be stored/recorded beyond the answers your record!
Credit goes to @gianttol for putting this wonderful prompt list together and making this all possible!
Most of these prompts will include writing that is less than 1k in length (or it might not even include writing at all! 👀) because the main goal of this was practice for me to work on shorter bit of writing, while also introducing new characters, concepts, and AU’s to my blog<3 However, I do plan to include at least one chapter of Genesis Day in the mix.
Additionally, some prompts I might skip due to health/IRL reasons, but my goal is to get ALL of these eventually filled<3 though I won’t overwork myself if that goal doesn’t seem doable.
For ease of access I will include the links to each of the days’ prompts below along with a note regarding the cast, AU, and genre and will be updated daily.
I hope y’all enjoy! 💜
UPDATE: hiatus on this due to IRL events<3
Fluffy (Alice & Freyja; any AU; hurt/comfort)
Different Era (Alice & Freyja; “Knight!AU”; fluff)
Panic (Rowan & Rust; Offline Valor/Borrower!AU; action and fear)
Sizeshifting (Freyja & Alice; “Emotional Shifter!AU; short comedy)
For the sixth prompt of GT July, I wanted to show off a recent commission courtesy of @sp_ace_bar on Instagram! This is the first pass at Princeps Lazuli, of House Silver.
(their outfit is made from a 5 Gum wrapper, and it just makes me so happy. Credit to @chamomile-g-tea for helping work up the initial design sketch<3)
Princeps Lazuli of House Silver (they/she), is someone I’ve been excited to include for quite a while!
As a note: “princeps” in the setting of Offline Valor is used as a gender-neutral term to define the child of a monarch (credit goes to @dimension20official for that wonderful inspiration, shout-out to Princeps Zortch).
A former friend and ally of Rowan (before he was known as “Rowan the Last”), they are a savant of the royal courts. Where Rowan is skilled a blade, Lazuli is skilled with their words. Information, persuasion, deception--these are the tools of this 2.3″ would-be Monarch.
And though necessity saw fit to bring Rowan the Last and the “titan” Zelly Klouse-Calloway into Lazuli’s court, time will tell to see whether or not Princeps Lazuli is a genuine ally...or if they are looking to merely add more pieces to the board.
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Zelly’s note (censored, per this stream’s sponsorship. You can thank her Mods): guys! :D what is UP?! ok ok ok ok, SO. remember that [censor]ing [CENSOR] who attacked Ro? it’s pret-ty sus that she had a [censor]-ing HOUSE SILVER knight helmet, right?! like. cmon. that’s GOTTA mean something. If Ro is sure this [we definitely had to censor that one] was some kinda tiny Boba Fett then someone had to hire her...so why not the princeps? they HATE Ro:( idk w/e happened between them, but we gotta get some more info before that [censor] comes back for round 2.
